Jessica Thompson will present Freestyle SoundHack, a collaborative performance in the form of a workshop. The performance / workshop involves building Freestyle SoundKits – wearable sound pieces prototyped by the artist – that generate and broadcast electronic beats as users move through the urban environment. During the performance, the artist will give her project to the public by teaching workshop participants how to make their own Freestyle SoundKits, which they can distribute as they wish, using whatever sounds they choose.

The workshop begins at Video Pool with a Freestyle SoundKits building session, followed by live sonic and movement-based interventions in the public spaces of the Exchange District. Thompson regards her transmission of open-source technological skill as the core component of the performance. She is interested in sharing technological knowledge so that the sonic transformation of public space becomes less of a specialized artistic activity and more of an ordinary occurrence.

The workshop/performance is open to anyone aged 14 years and older. No previous electronics, hacking, coding or performance experience is needed – just a desire to experiment and play.

Enrollment is limited to 10 participants and is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

The fee for the workshop is $40, which will cover the cost of workshop materials. Participants should bring their own snacks/ lunch to the workshop.

This workshop is presented by Video Pool Media Arts Centre as part of the performance festival, (in)visible Cities, which is a co-presentation of aceartinc., Urban Shman Gallery, and Plug In ICA. For more information, visit invisiblecitiesperformance.blogspot.com.

ADDITIONAL EVENT – Please join us on Friday, September 12 at 300-100 Arthur Street from 7:00 - 8:00 p.m. for an artist talk presented by Jessica Thompson during which time she’ll talk about her past work, current projects, and future ideas.

ARTIST BIO — Jessica Thompson is a new media artist whose practice encompasses sound, performance, and mobile technologies. Her projects enable audience members to create user-defined spaces and situations within urban environments. Her projects have been shown in exhibitions and festivals such as New Territories (ARCO 2005, Madrid), MACO (Mexico City), dp003 (Dundee, Scotland), ISEA 2006 (San Jose, CA), the 2006 Conflux Festival (New York), Kunsthallen Brænderigården (Denmark), and InterAccess Artist Run Centre (Toronto). Her project, SOUNDBIKE, was featured at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2005 and, more recently, she was one of five international artists invited to participate in Reinventing the Wheel, a residency held at *.artlabs in Sibiu, Romania. For more information, please visit: www.jessicathompson.ca.

These exhibition is presented thanks to generous financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, and the Winnipeg Arts Council.

VIDEO POOL MEDIA ARTS CENTRE is a non-profit artist run centre dedicated to advancing the discipline of media art by providing media artists, non-profit organizations and community groups with access to professional video and media equipment, training, distribution, and programming. Video Pool strives to be a national leader fostering innovation, experimentation, critical dialogue, and advocacy in media arts.

Contact:
Cam Woykin, Education Coordinator
300-100 Arthur Street, Winnipeg MB R3B 1H3
videopool.org // videopool.blogspot.com

Dafna Naphtali is a sound-artist and improviser-composer from an eclectic musical background. As singer/guitarist/electronic-musician she performs and composes using custom sound processing of voice and other instruments. Besides her composing and improvised projects, she co-leads the digital chamber punk ensemble What is it Like to be a Bat? with Kitty Brazelton (http://www.whatbat.org) and has collaborated/performed with Lukas Ligeti, David First, Joshua Fried, Ras Moshe, Alexander Waterman, Kathleen Supové and Hans Tammen, among others and done sound design and programming for Jin Hi Kim, Shelley Hirsch, Pamela Z, Phoebe Legere, Fred Frith, Jim Staley, Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman, Chico Freeman and others. Dafna can be heard with Mechanique(s) on a forthcoming release on In-situ, and was featured vocalist on José Halac’s CD “Dance of 1000 Heads” (Tellus), as well as on her acclaimed release with What is it Like to be a Bat? on Tzadik/Oracles.

Dafna’s residency involved dynamically controlled algorithmic improvisation, using vocal cues, Morse code and Wii controllers to elicit beat frequencies, trigger and manipulate LEMUR percussion robots and shred on Guitar bot.

Andrew Schneider is a multimedia designer and performer whose work investigates human/technological interdependence. He is the co-founder and Associate Artistic Director of the Chicago-based theatre company, BigPictureGroup. His solo performance work has been seen at P.S.122, Monkeytown, The Prelude Festival, and The Tank. His multimedia devices have been featured in Art Review, Wired, TimeOut NY, Maker Faire, SIGGRAPH, Dorkbot, the Telfair Art Museum, and at the Center Pompidou in Paris. His Solar Bikini has been featured internationally and is slated to be featured in the next Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. His latest projects include Experimental Devices for Performance (.com) and Acting Stranger (.com). Andrew Holds a Masters Degree in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU. He is currently working with The Wooster Group. (http://andrewjs.com)

Doing musical theatre with robots used to be Andrew’s standard joke answer to the question “So what do you want to do with your life?” Finally, a life-long dream comes true. He plans to start with a dance number, interfacing his movements with the robots via custom-built wearable controllers.

Born in New York City, Simon Morris (US/France) is a new media artist exploring urban landscapes, new musical interfaces and skateboarding. Investigating new forms of musical expression, his work examines technology and its role as a socially engaged art practice. He has conducted live performances at Eyebeam, NYC, the Article Biennale 2006 in Stavanger, Norway, the KiasmaMuseum in Helsinki, Finland and the Barker Theatre in Turku, Finland.

Simon is planning an interactive musical performance orchestrated by the movements of three skateboards.

By subway:

Take the F/M/R to 4th Ave. and walk one block down either 9th or 10th St. to 3rd Ave. LEMURplex is on 3rd Ave. between 9th & 10th Sts. Or, take the F/G to Smith & 9th Sts. and walk two blocks up 9th. Cross and then turn right onto 3rd Ave.

Freestyle SoundKits are wearable sound pieces that generate and broadcast electronic beats as users move through the urban environment. Freestyle SoundHack is a collaborative performance in the form of a workshop. During the performance, the artist will give her project to the public by teaching workshop participants how to make their own Freestyle SoundKits, to distribute as they wish, using whatever sounds they choose. Material fee: $20 (full kit), $10 (kit-amp).
For more info or to RSVP, please email info [at] pmgallery.ca.

Jessica Thompson is a new media artist whose practice encompasses sound, performance and mobile technologies. Her projects enable audience members to create user-defined spaces and situations within urban environments. Her work has been shown in exhibitions and festivals such as New Territories, (ARCO 2005, Madrid) MACO, (Mexico City) dp003, (Dundee, Scotland) ISEA 2006, (San Jose, CA) the 2006 Conflux Festival, (New York) Kunsthallen Brænderigården (Denmark) and InterAccess Artist Run Centre. (Toronto) Her project, SOUNDBIKE, was curated into Art Projects at Art Basel Miami Beach by Canadian curator, Natalie Kovacs, in 2005 and recently, she was one of five international artists invited to participate in Reinventing the Wheel, a residency held at *.artlabs in Sibiu, Romania.

Jun Murakoshi was born in 1978 and grew up in Saitama, Japan. He obtained a Master of Engineering in Industrial Design, at Chiba University, Japan. He completed his MA in Design Products at the Royal College of Art, London, in 2007.

A phonetic pun on the old acronym for What You See is What You Get from the era of the Graphical User Interface, WYSIWYG (for wearable, sonic instrument, with gesture) draws on music technology, dance, children’s group games, textile arts, and fashion. Created first and foremost to sustain social play for people of all ages, WYSIWYG allows players to express themselves whether enjoying time in a park, dancing at a club, passing the time during a long car trip, or just playing at home.

The research is being carried out in collaboration with Marcelo Wanderley, an associate professor at the McGill University Schulich School of Music in Montreal, and draws on Wanderley’s research into the gestural control of sound synthesis and new interfaces for musical expression. The custom-designed digital instruments embedded in the cloth sample movement to transform ambient body movement and freehand gestures into new sounds or “voices” associated with a player or transmitted to other players in the vicinity. These devices can also be embedded into furnishings or other types of objects. In addition, they can store and re-synthesize sounds by nuancing them using data transmitted by nearby sensors. The research project therefore targets the creation of a series of devices – some made from soft material – that will react in different ways to proximity and contact, movements, noise characteristics, and the progress of the game itself. The sonic behavior of the devices are designed in the spirit of games such as hide-and-seek and blind-man’s buff and also work well with a variable number of players in both ad hoc and rehearsed situations.

When the project was launched in November 2006, the WYSIWYG team experimented with a prototype ”blanket” able to sense how it is handled. During the presentation, eight people manipulated this photo-sensitive blanket to produce a spatial sonic landscape. In July 2007, dancers performed a semi-choreographed movement improvisation around a 20’ suspended “tapestry”and a 6’ “tablecloth” woven with conductive thread on a Jacquard loom by Joey Berzowska’s XS Labs.

With WYSIWYG, Sha and his team intend to develop other architectural-scale sensate cloths that function as agents co-performing with dancers and as image-bearing, kinetic surfaces in other performance contexts.

The WYSIWYG team:

Prof. Sha Xin Wei — PI
Prof. Marcelo Wanderley — PI
David Gaultier — mechatronics & feature extraction programming
Freida Abtan — sound instrument creator (software)
David Birnbaum — sound instrument creator
Elliot Sinyor — sound instrument creator
Harry Smoak — assistant project technical coordinator
Doug van Nort — gesture/sound feature extraction, mapping
Rodolphe Koehly — physical materials advisor

Are you getting the picture yet? DrumPants! Yes, now tapping on your legs will produce more than just the dull “thwack” of struck flesh — it will create a symphony of percussion rivaled only by Neil Peart (and maybe Jon Theodore). Actually, odbol’s design isn’t really that revolutionary, since it’s kind of like sticking regular triggers in your pockets, and frankly, as much as we’d like to be complimentary to the little dude, he ain’t that great of a drummer. Still, kudos for the effort, and when he comes up with the sub-derma triggers, we’re all ears. Check the video after the break to see Tyler rocking the trap kit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2BK4deK7HM

From: engadget with thanks to the listenerd,

What’s the tech behind all those pulses, sound beats and bursts of light?

The dress i sew is sewn in 4 layers of cloth. Underneath it all is a very simple jersey-dress design. On that dress there are 10 detachable patches, all equipped with 10 leds each (a total of 100 leds). From each of these patches there is a wire attached to a battery, which is hidden in a pocket on the very front of the dress. Not only the battery is hidden in this pocket but also a microphone and a small equaliser connected to a small microcomputer (called arduino). On top on all this there is a nylon cloth and also two layers of see through cloth that helps to spread the light from the leds to larger clusters.

How does it work?

When music or any sound is detected by the microphone it is being led to the equalizer connected to the computer. If there is a base sound the computer transmits a signal to the battery to send pulses of electricity out to the leds in the dress. This obviously lightens the leds up. Then in a second or so they softly go of again. So when listening to music the leds are pulsing to the rhythm of the music. There is also a small lever attached to the microphone, making it possible to adapt to the loudness of sounds around you. This makes the dress work both where there are low volumes like being at home listening to music or out clubbing where the music is very loud.

What was your inspiration/motivation for this project?

When I made the dress I were out clubbing a lot. Finding it dull that so many people weren’t dancing but just hanging around sipping on their beer. I wanted to make a garment that would help to create an atmosphere of dancing and partying even though the wearer wouldn’t dance. Much like something visual such as a discoball or a set of strob-lights helps to give a greater experience of sounds. The garment is of course not only made for people that doesn’t dance, but for all people in the club.

Most challenging step you encountered while working on the dress?

The most challenging part of the task was creating a functioning equalizer out of some electronic devices, and also making the programming of the computer work as I wanted. It was an absolute nightmare! But I got loads of help from Mackie and Marcus two teachers and students of our school.

Thanks Calle!

Photos by Johan Sundell. [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not-art]

Works include: Leif Krinkle’s human-powered Krinkle-O-Tron, Rory Nugent’s solar-powered Xylophone, Alice Planas’ and Leif Krinkle’s solar-powered Jewelry, Andrew Schneider’s solar-powered Bikini and more.

Gallery Hours: Works in the storefront are visible at all times; Works in the gallery can be seen by appointment.

Hearing Sirens is an ongoing performance project for portable horn loudspeakers. The work of Cathy Van Eck, Hearing Sirens is based on two of the applications of the word siren. The siren is both a mythological woman, having the body of a bird and the head of a woman as a noise maker, used to warn in emergency cases. The sirens as bird-women were known in Antiquity for their beautiful singing. It was unable to resist them and most of the men who heard them did not survive. The siren as a noisemaker is used to warn people for emergency cases and can therefore be seen as a survival tool. It uses a rotating disk with holes, to create its characteristic sound. Cathy uses both as an acoustic, visual and conceptual starting-point for this piece.

For this project Van Eck built so called portable loudspeakerhorns, consisting of a small mp3-player, a box with an amplifier and battery, and two loudspeakers in two big yellow horns. The construction is made to be worn on the back of a dancer or performer. The sounds used in the piece have been made with a physical modelling of the sound of an emergency siren, programmed in Max-MSP.